Email applications are commonly used to communicate messages between a sender and one or more individuals. One type of email message which is commonly sent is that containing a task request, where any one person in a group of recipients is requested to perform certain actions. For example, a message may be sent to a group of system administrators with a critical request to fix a problem on a particular system. Any one of the group is able to fix the problem, but only one person is needed undertake the task, and each person is not necessarily available to undertake the task. Further, the task request may be time sensitive. Thus, there exists a need to timely inform each recipient about the task, and prevent multiple users from accepting the task and duplicating work.
Email messaging may be used to notify a group of persons when one person signs up for or undertakes the task. However, the individual who has decided to complete the task must often reply to the entire email recipient list and notify each recipient that the task has been undertaken or completed. This involves the exchange of numerous email messages, often to people who were unaware of or unable to execute the task.
One workaround for this problem is through the use of a method which assigns tasks according to a priority email address list. In this scenario, messages are first sent to the users most capable or most likely to complete the task, and if the user is unable to undertake the task, the next person in the priority list is contacted. Although this system is able to prevent duplicated work, this method of communication may take a large amount of time to operate, and is relatively inefficient.
What is needed in the art is a way to communicate to a group of recipients regarding a task and the status of the task via email in parallel, rather than sequential, fashion.